New Book Reveals Hopewell Indians

The Scioto Hopewell people of North America have been of great interest to prehistoric archaeologists for a number of reasons:  their monumental, 80 acre earthworks aligned precisely to events in the day and night skies,  masterfully worked glistening metals and semiprecious stones into intricate and elegant symbolic designs,  and their community burial houses two-thirds of a football field in size.

Along with this unique physical evidence, archaeologists also know about their society and culture. Their world view and rituals inspired the artistic exploration of the principles of three-dimensional perspective a thousand years before Renaissance artists discovered them in the Old World and unlike the artistic norms of any other Native American people. The Scioto Hopewells intricate social order and their religious-based concepts of alliance afforded them three centuries of peace among both individuals and communities. For these reasons, the Hopewell are a unique case in prehistoric North America.

This book has two aims. The first is to present in rich detail a coherent holistic synthesis of the culture, lifeways, environment, and history of the Hopewell people - who were one of the most socially complex people in the Americas at the time, and for centuries before and afterward.

The second goal of this book is to systematize and present for use by other researchers and students the massive, largely unpublished mortuary-archaeological and physical anthropological information and other supporting data that have made the fullness of our cultural reconstructions of Scioto Hopewell life possible. This is presented in the DVD that comes with the book.

The authors remove the organizational overhead that previously has constrained archaeologists from making in-depth, empirical inquiries into the social and political life, rituals, and religious concepts of Hopewellian peoples generally. And in so doing, they are able to encourage further detailed studies and deeper understandings of these remarkable peoples.